Exeter City – What’s Happened?
As the little-known female English philosopher Beth Nel Green once observed: “Luvaduk, s’funny old world, innit Guv’nor?” Last time Morecambe met Exeter City, the Grecians were playing with an emergency replacement for regular goalkeeper Jonny Maxted, who had dislocated his knee in training. For nineteen-year-old Icelander Jökull Andrésson, this was only his second game for the club.
Guess what? Regular first-team Morecambe stopper Mark Halstead hasn’t damaged his knee but he has been unavailable for Morecambe for the past two games. So young Mr Andrésson found himself in the Shrimps’ net tonight against his previous club also for only the second time. Jökull impressed last Saturday against Colchester, marshalling a defence he had basically just met well and clearing the ball with tremendous kicks which would be the envy of must rugby professionals. He kept a clean sheet and helped to maintain his new club’s excellent current record: they have won three of their last five League Two games and lost only one.
Morecambe arrived in Devon in fifth place in the table, having two points more than tonight’s opponents, albeit having played one match more. Matt Taylor’s City team, on the other hand, were eighth in the league, having only won one of their last five games and drawing three others. This win happened against struggling Stevenage last Saturday at St James’ Park, where the Grecians won 3-1.
Morecambe don’t have a particularly auspicious record against Exeter: they have only beaten them four times in eighteen previous meetings and have lost seven of the rest. (Exeter’s own reckoning is even worse: they claim to have won 11 of 27 games; with 12 draws.)
It was interesting that City’s own website could not bring itself to mention the name of its nearest rivals, Plymouth Argyle, when assessing tonight opponents. Instead, it says of Derek Adams: “The man who suggested Ollie Watkins’ winner in the derby was ‘lucky’, Derek Adams, 45, hardly needs an introduction to City Fans. The boss of our fiercest adversary for four years… began down the A38”. Oh dear – long tribal Devonian memories better suited to that period of world history, I fear. But what did Derek have to say about last Saturday’s win over Colchester before tonight’s game?:
“It was an excellent performance and a great win that took us back into the play-off spots. We passed the ball well and got into good areas to get the goals and you can only do that with good football players which we have here at this club. We have a talented group of players who are mentally strong. We came up against a team who, last week, drew against the league leaders and have a lot of talented players. So we’re delighted with the win. We scored three goals and we could have scored more. It extended our unbeaten run at home and continues our move up the league as well.”
Tonight, he was unable to select Aaron Wildig or Mark Halstead again and there was no place on the bench for people such as Alex Kenyon or Brad Lyons, for whatever reason.
It was dry as the match started on a pretty bare pitch. Twenty minutes or so from the end, though, swirling, misty rain swept across the ground to soak the players and create strange yellowish halos around the floodlights.
The visitors immediately went onto the front foot – and stayed there for the first twenty minutes or so. Cole Stockton immediately played a good ball to Steven Hendrie on the Morecambe left but the full-back’s control let him down. Stockton then received a pass on the left flank after five minutes and sent a looped cross to John O’Sullivan on the right: he played-in Adam Phillips, whose shot was just wide of Jonny Maxted’s goal. Two minutes later, Carlos Mendes-Gomes got the ball in the middle of the field and – with that almost mystical understanding he has with Phillips – found Morecambe’s Number Twenty in the opposing penalty area with a tremendous pass. Maxted – a bearded giant in pink – immediately flattened him and was booked. Adam picked himself up and scored from the penalty spot as the home goalkeeper dived the wrong way: to his right. In the tenth minutes, Ryan Cooney’s long pass found Cole on the Shrimps’ left again but the centre forward lost control in a promising position. He then contrived to head into touch a few minutes later instead of anywhere near the target before Carlos was far too cool with thirteen minutes played and attempted to casually back-heel a low cross from the right back from the edge of the City penalty area – to nobody. With a quarter of an hour played, Exeter were awarded their first free-kick at a time – by my reckoning – that they had already conceded at least four. They just weren’t in it until Jökull Andrésson made a smart double save first from Ben Seymour as he beat Sam Lavelle on the Exeter right and then the rebound from Matt Jay with seventeen minutes on the clock. Matt Taylor shook things up with a double substitution after about twenty minutes but the lacklustre performance of the home team barely improved. Too many set-pieces were over-hit into touch and when City actually tried to play their way into the game, more often than not, they tamely lost the ball after two or three passes. As a loud voice increasingly stridently yelled at them to “Close the gaps!” from the sidelines, the Referee had a stern word with Ryan Bowman in the presence of his Captain – Archie Collins – and clearly told him to cool it after just twenty-four minutes. The nearest we came to another goal was right at the end of the first half. Pierce Sweeney completely failed to deal with a ball played into the edge of the Exeter penalty area from the Morecambe right and it spun towards Carlos, who was standing virtually on the goal-line behind him. Down he went as the player actually standing on the line clearly pushed him – but Referee Craig Hicks gave nothing.
Exeter surely had to improve in the second half. But an incident after two minutes of the re-start said it all as far as the hosts were concerned tonight. City attempted to attack down the right; the ball was over-hit and Nathaniel KP was allowed to let it run harmlessly over the goal-line as no player in a striped red shirt even attempted to stop it happening. And so it went on. Morecambe stood off – as they so often do these days – and let the hosts have the ball. Then hit them on the break. In the fiftieth minute, Sully’s cross from the right tamely looped over Maxted’s bar as Stockton failed to connect with it properly using his head. At the other end, Andrésson fielded the occasional cross and had a fairly routine save to make from Lewis Page after 52 minutes. The home team had a half-hearted appeal for a penalty with just over an hour played but that is as near as they got to equalising all night. Phillips unusually mis-controlled the ball after 64 minutes as he tried to set-up a Morecambe attack but he redeemed himself just a minute later. Receiving the ball in the middle of the park, he looked up and played a perfect pass to Cole who – unmarked in the home penalty area, controlled the ball with one touch and struck it home with the next one. And that was basically that.
This is the weakest performance I have ever personally seen from an Exeter City team. Nobody could believe that this pallid outfit was the same side which could have easily won the return fixture in Lancashire less than eight weeks ago. They seemed low on confidence and totally bereft of ideas. The only increase in intensity which occurred during the second half was the volume and frequency of the Anglo-Saxon expletives from their bench after Morecambe went two goals up. At the end of the game, the Shrimps found themselves in the automatic promotion places in third position in League Two, just a point behind leaders Cambridge United and having played a game less. Better still, they finally got rid of their negative goal difference after being hammered by the leaders at home early in the season. Worryingly for them, Exeter fell to ninth in League Two this evening – and could fall further still depending on results elsewhere later on.
There were rumours last week that ex-Chesterfield goalkeeper Kyle Letheren was on his way to join Morecambe full-time and be re-united with former Manager Derek Adams – for whom he played briefly at Plymouth Argyle – once more. Tonight, he sat on the bench. If the Welshman can emulate even a fraction of the achievements of the last goalie the Shrimps signed from the Spireites – Barry Roche – he won’t have done a bad job. The word `legendary’ is bandied about so often currently that it has become more or less meaningless but Big Baz is up there in the company of Charlie Lea; Dave Roberts; Steve Done, John Coleman (still Morecambe’s leading scorer of all time), Sammy Mac and the great Jim Bentley himself. Well, he is in the minds of Morecambe fans ancient enough – like me – to remember who the first three actually were. But even the big Irishman can’t claim to have kept a clean sheet in every game he played for the Shrimps. So well done young Jökull – because you can. I, for one, will be looking out for you in Iceland’s goal next time England are about to be humiliated by your fine nation on the football field. In fact, I might even join in the Thunder Clap as a tribute to your services to our club as I attempt to say: “Tak og gangi ƿer vel!” which (I hope) means `thank you and good luck!’…
Exeter City: 23 Jonny Maxted (Y); 30 Josh Key; 26 Pierce Sweeney; 34 Alex Hartridge (2 Jake Caprice 19’); 15 Tom Parkes; 10 Archie Collins (C); 4 Nigel Atangana (8 Jake Taylor 60’); 20 Lewis Page; 17 Matt Jay; 9 Ben Seymour (7 Nicky Law 19’); 12 Ryan Bowman.
Subs not used: 1 Lewis Ward; 3 Jack Sparkes; 6 Rory McCardle; 18 Alex Fisher.
Morecambe: 25 Jökull Andrésson; 4 Nathaniel Knight-Percival; 3 Stephen Hendrie; 5 Sam Lavelle (C); 8 Toumani Diagouraga (Y); 9 Cole Stockton; 11 Carlos Mendes-Gomes (7 Jordan Slew 68’); 20 Adam Phillips (Y) (18 Freddie Price 88’); 24 Yann Songo’o; 16 John O’Sullivan (19 Liam McAlinden 82’); 21 Ryan Cooney (Y).
Subs not used: 1 Kyle Letheren; 6 Harry Davis; 18 Ben Pringle; 22 Liam Gibson.
Ref: Craig Hicks.
